Irish booze has deeper historic connections than any whiskey category. Some legends indicate St. Patrick introduced distillation of grains around 5 AD, making Ireland the true origins of whiskey.

But there has been no scholarly evidence to support this. We do know for fact that the Irish were making whiskey in 1405, when the Irish Annals tell us some bloke died from drinking too much.

And we thought we had bad memories from drinking Irish whiskey! Shakespeare even discussed an Irish man drinking “aqua vitae,” Latin for water of life, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, leading to many scholars wondering if this was Irish whiskey or brandy. My money is on whiskey. So, the next time you’re camping and you want a historic dram near the campfire, consider packing Irish whiskey.